With three months to go before facing the voters, the Liberal government has delivered what might be called a second marriage budget, an act Oscar Wilde called the triumph of hope over experience.

The experience is that to maintain public services at the current level, spending has to be increased to at least cover general inflation and the growth in population. In health care, the largest piece of the provincial budget, the increases have been higher to meet rising costs and the demands placed on the system by an aging population.

The hope expressed in the three-year plan presented as a long-promised balanced budget is that the government will be able to achieve this year what it has failed to do in the past — hold spending to less than half of the historical average and less than half of what would nominally be needed simply to stand pat.

This is not an election budget in the traditional sense. It is not larded with obvious goodies, although there are a few. It is an election budget nonetheless and what it primarily illustrates is the need to change the fixed date from the spring to the fall so budgeting in an election year will be less about what can be promised and more about what is delivered.

This year, the province hired an outside expert to validate the revenue assumptions in the budget. Given the improvements that have been made in the transparency of budgeting since B.C.’s auditor general found an excess of optimism in the 1996 pre-election budget, it’s not surprising that Tim O’Neill, the former chief economist for the Bank of Montreal, essentially gave the assumptions a clean bill of health.

Sadly, the spending side of the budget unveiled by Finance Minister Mike de Jong is less credible. As promised, the numbers reflect the promise of a balanced budget. A budget is just a plan, however.

For it to be really useful, the plan has to be implemented. And to be implemented, it has to be achievable.

Many of the spending estimates included in this budget will be difficult to achieve. The overall spending target is less than the rate of inflation. It barely covers the estimated population growth. To maintain that rate over three years implies a continued agenda of program cuts.

Achieving the budget targets will depend on maintaining the freeze on wages for public servants that has been in place for three years for another three. It also means persuading doctors to agree to a no-increase contract, which based on experience, is highly unlikely.

As well, the decision to highlight asset sales to generate the revenue needed to achieve the slim balance undermines its value. Living within our means shouldn’t include selling off property to pay for current operations.

The basic credibility problem with de Jong’s budget is that it is being launched into the teeth of an election campaign. It is a spending plan on which voters are being asked to pass judgment without the benefit of the time needed to assess whether it is based on substance.

If the election date were switched from the spring to the fall, the change would reduce the temptation to bring in a budget based on promises that may be difficult to keep. A fall date will allow us to know whether the previous year’s budget has been achieved through the Public Accounts. The first quarterly report for the current fiscal year could also be available.

Elections should be about the choices made by governments that are reflected in budgets. But British Columbians should be able to have the confidence that budgets are fundamentally realistic plans for governing and not merely a collection of promises that may not survive election day.

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